THE BODYSTIGMA: CORPOREAL IDENTITY FROM THE REPUGNANT AND VIOLENCE IN EL MONSTRUO PENTÁPODO BY LILIANA BLUM

Abstract

This article analyzes through repugnance and violence the construction of female corporeal identity in the novel El monstruo pentápodo by mexican writer Liliana Blum. This approach to aforementioned notions fosters the theoretical-concep tual proposal of bodystigma, which is useful for the review of corporality in this and other narratives whose themes explore the discourse on the body-mark. The notion arises from research and reflection on the rhetorical functions that the body has had
throughout history: as a metaphor of nature, metonymy of the divine and simile of the harmonious (when it conforms to conventions of beauty). In this way, the bodystigma deals with the peculiarities that transform the “normal” body into “abnormal”, that is, in that mark or marks that particularize it to totalize it into something that makes it different —whether in rejection or repugnance— and thus, finally, despersonalize it. It is a synecdoche in which the body ceases to be a body and becomes a mark and, therefore, becomes largely susceptible to violence; the body is transformed into a territory over which violent power is exercised